If ever the Kurdish saying “No friends but the mountains” applied it is in the situation the People’s Defence Force/Womens’s Defence Force now confront in Afrin on the Turkish Syrian border. In the Byzantine politics for which this region is infamous, for a brief period the interests of the US government and the Kurds in northern Syria coincided. The US, having created the Islamic fundamentalist forces which have ravaged this region, faced blowback, after ISIS took over large areas of Iraq and Syria. The most effective forces confronting ISIS in the region are the Kurdish Left YPG/YPJ, so they received some short-term cynical and limited backing from the US State Department. With ISIS in retreat, it is back to supporting other Islamic fundamentalist forces, particularly the al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front, and trying to win Turkey back from the Russian Federation to the US side. This article, written by Martin Suchanek, first appeared in Neue Internationale no. 226, and addresses the complex situation in Afrin.

Turkish airforce and artillery strike at Kurdish YPG/YPJ held town of Afrin

HANDS OFF ADRIN! SOLIDARITY WITH THE KURDS

“Operation Olive Branch”, the Turkish incursion into the Kurdish held territory of Afrin, has been running since January 20th. Last weekend alone, the Turkish army flew over a hundred bombing missions. Already days before, heavy artillery had fired at the positions of the Kurdish self-defence forces YPG/YPJ (People’s Defence Force / Women’s Defence Units). Since Sunday, 21 January, tanks and infantry, often deployed by puppet troops of the Turkish-led FSA (Free Syrian Army), including numerous Islamist ultra-reactionaries, have penetrated into the Kurdish territory around Afrin. Continue reading “HANDS OFF AFRIN! SOLIDARITY WITH THE KURDS”